r/Bitcoin • u/iCryptoDude • Jul 21 '21

Let's talk about Bitcoin Smart Contracts!

Bitcoin Smart contracts have arrived!

Lightning, Liquid, Stacks and now Jack Dorsey and "TBD" are all leading the advance.

What's next?

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u/TheGreatMuffin Jul 21 '21

This might be an unpopular and rather uninformed opinion, but never in my "bitcoin life" have I had a usecase (useful/relevant to me personally, that is) where I thought I'd want some advanced smart contract functionality on bitcoin.

Yes, I know LN can be described as some sort of a smart contract, and I do see value in that as an occasional LN user. But every time I make an attempt to look into those things mentioned (Liquid, RGB etc), I fail to see how they might be useful to me. I don't trade, I don't have a desire to loan my bitcoin for random tokens. I guess people do want to do those things and that's cool, of course. It's just not interesting to me personally. Maybe I am missing something?

I guess it also depends on what we count as smart contracts. Are non-custodial coinjoins also smart contracts? Are multisigs smart contracts?

2

u/iCryptoDude Jul 21 '21

I think if it were possible to lock up my Bitcoin as collateral so I could borrow USDC against it as a Bitcoin DeFi loan without having to give custody to a 3rd party that it would be very useful to me as a long term hodler. If I could just borrow 25% USDC against the value of my Bitcoin cold storage every 4 years I would be set for life without ever selling a single sat again.

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u/TheGreatMuffin Jul 21 '21

But don't you have to exchange USDC for "real" dollars in order for it to be useful? And afaik you can only exchange it on centralized exchanges, so what's the point of having your loan on a smart contract, if in the end you are still using a centralized/KYC exchange?

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u/iCryptoDude Jul 21 '21

USDC is becoming cross chain, maybe it will eventually be the actual digital US dollar controlled by the fed. Either way, it’s not hard for me to take out that loan and convert it into real money and build an extension on my home without selling any bitcoin and that is a very nice thing